Dance with the Devil

Prologue

It started in the summer, the summer of 1852. It was a particularly mild and good summer for California--the growing season was long for farmers, industry was booming, and the Gold Rush was in full swing. The West was a thing of beauty for one to behold. Solitary, yet fast-paced and always changing. Towns sprung up as Gold Fever raged through the country, bringing more and more settlers to the West. Those who were already there mined and prospected alongside these newcomers, also in search of gold.

The people who did not take the risk usually farmed, taking what land they could get. Like the family of Mary Elizabeth and Lucas Lynch, and their daughter, Eliza. They lived only hours from the mining town of Columbia, California on a small wheat farm their father worked with a few of his close brothers and brothers-in-law. Mary Elizabeth helped her sister-in-law, Constance, run a general store in the local town. Eliza, their only daughter, ran the quaint and quiet household at 16 years of age. Together, the profits helped the family afford to live a life of comfort and modesty luxury, but it was a far from a wealthy life. It was a life Eliza loathed. She hated the confines of the house and the restricting life of a young woman in the West. She wanted to be free.

It was a life that Gabriel Sinnet dreamed of.

It was just the young man and his father, James Sinnet. His father was a notorious gun slinger, thief and and smuggler, leading his band around the whole of America. Gabriel was somewhat of a bandit-in-training. He traveled on the run just like part of the group, helping them whenever he could. His ragtag "family" was all he had. James wanted his son to have a normal life, but that wasn't possible after the crimes he had committed and with the price that was on his head. It just couldn't happen.

Two very different lives, both intertwined in fates that they despised. Neither knew of the change that would be coming, and that their dreams could become a startling reality.